the color of its countries
by GyrosKairos42
Summary: A story about Destiny.  Depressing.  Distressing.  Done.  Reviews are welcomed muchly.
1. Uncertainty

Token Disclaimers:            The Sandman and characters thereof belong to Gaiman/Vertigo/DC Comics.  The poem included is "somewhere i have never traveled," by e.e.cummings.  This is a REVISION of the first chapter – there are a few additions made in an attempt to make matters clearer.

"...the color of its countries..."

In the beginning was the Word.

And, since there must always be an observer, a reader for the word, there was a finger to mark it, and a page to hold it, and an outstretched palm to support the heavy book, and eyes that were not quite eyes to read it.

For such is the way of things, particularly stories.

Destiny grew from the hand up as he came into his almost-life, and when there is life...

Death stepped forth from the void and smiled.

One word linked with another into a stream of consciousness (and unconsciousness) as Dream shivered into being.

But change was required as the universe, such as it was, (and Destiny, such as _he _was) shifted uneasily, and Destruction plucked up the sword of bright stars and sighted along the blade.

That was all for a long while.

*

See Destiny as he is now: eyes hidden deep within the shadow of his cowl, assuming he possesses what could be considered eyes at all; meticulous and withdrawn, he is the most composed of his family.  The Book is chained to him as a child to her mother by an umbilical cord (though what plays each role is uncertain) – it is possible that whatever blood moves through Destiny's body runs in the Book as well, though it is more likely, considering Destiny's current personality, that the dry, dusty, emotionless power of the Book fuels him instead.

It is near impossible to consider Destiny as having his own story.  He is the observer, the witness to all lives diagrammed and mapped that is necessary for them to exist, and for him there are no choices to be made that were not engraved from the beginning.  He treads a well-practiced dance with every move recorded firmly -- and there can be no story if there is no choice, no chance, no uncertainty.

See the chain: woven from adamantine and a strange grey thread, it runs from his wrist to the Book.  Like most of what is ancient, the chain is something beyond itself – a symbol, an icon of sorts.  It is the record of a promise, a reminder of a duty as well as and unbreakable restriction that rivals the bonds of Prometheus or Fenrir the Wolf.  

None of these were always thus.  

*

He walked the green earth, the rough brown of his cowl stark against the soft warmth of the waning day.  He carried the huge tome with something like reverence.

So Destiny read and walked (not quite blindly), then stopped abruptly.  The wind ruffled the pages of the Book and he smoothed them with long fingers, almost nervously.

"Hello...?" someone said uncertainly, in a woman's voice, as Destiny read the word at the same moment.  He didn't look up.  He _forced_ himself not to look up, but the words before his gaze became meaningless.

"Hello," he stated, dutifully reading his line.  He sensed the dim shape of her on the edges of his vision, the only shred of color in his black-white world of ink and space.

She was beautiful, the Book said, and it did not elaborate.  It failed to mention the smell of her, of green earth and crushed herbs and sweet rain, or the twist deep in his stomach that he could not explain.  Destiny soothed the pages again, convulsively.

The girl laughed, gently.

"And which one are you?" she asked brightly.  "Duty?  Depression?  Defeat?  Danger?"

"Destiny."

She smiled, the Book told him, and tipped her head to one side.  He felt he needed to say something.

"Who are you?"

She laughed again, but there was a catch in it that the Book did not comment upon.  "I am myself," she said, her voice still clear, but somehow darker.  "I've many names, I suppose.  But I can't tell you them..."

Destiny said nothing, pointedly.

"You could look them up, in that huge dark book of yours," she said.  "But, if you name me, I have to leave.  The rules, you see."

He stood very still as something shivered within him.  She was intriguing, not for her beauty or light or life, but for... for that hint of uncertainty, of vulnerability sheathed in strength.

"Then I won't," he said carefully, not looking at what he was meant to say, just staring at into the white space between the fixed Words, and he felt an indiscernible tumult of fear and hope quiver inside.

He didn't need to read to feel the warmth of her smile.

*

somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skillfully,mysterious) her first rose

*

Elsewhere:

Two figures existed that hadn't before, one tall and graceful with a whiff of wine and danger, the other squat and sadly fat, burdened with the heavy smell of fog and lead.  The first's eyes were the hypnotic topaz of the tiger, lazy and fatal; the second's were the pale sickly tint of a beggar's urine.  A hook was clenched in her chubby grey hand, which she dragged absently through her thick flesh.  The taller figure smiled, with perfect, candy-pink lips, in a grin sharper than the barb caught in its twin's grasp.

They held hands, the twins, and waited.  

Meanwhile:

Meanwhile there were three that were one, that flickered and flashed and morphed and wove long, grey, grim thread with a sound like mirthless laughter and white teeth.

They were not evil.  They were not kind.  They were themselves, their role, their function, their unreadable and ambiguous darkness.

They were watching.

Waiting.

*

He saw her (in a way) a day later, at the edge of dusk once more.

"Hello, Diversion," she said.

"Destiny."

"Of course."  He felt her smile again.

"I was waiting out here," he said unexpectedly, especially to himself.  "Earlier."  There was an unspoken question in his words.

"This is my time," she said, and Destiny saw the shadow that spread onto his page raise its arms, as if embracing the gloaming sky.  "In-between times."

"Who are you?" he asked again, gently.

There was a pause.

"You're beautiful when you smile," the girl said, and he heard the unspoken evasion of the question.

"I was smiling?"

"Yes.  Didn't you know?"

He relented.  "What can I call you?"

She was silent for awhile, thinking, and he imagined her face (as he thought it might look like, considering that he had never seen a human face) creased in quiet reverie.

"Trivia," she said after a pause.  "Yes.  You may call me Trivia."

They walked along together in silence under the golden sky.  Destiny heard her sigh, quietly, and felt her relax.

"...Were you afraid?" he asked of her.

A pause.  "I suppose."

He said nothing, simply waited for her to speak once more.

"I am uncertainty, as certainly as you are duteous, dubious Dignity --"

"--Destiny--"

"--Destiny, of course," she continued.  "But I am myself, too; I am subject to what my role entails.  So I am uncertain."

He stopped walking as she turned to him.

"Listen," she said gently, firmly.  He stared fixedly at her words before him, unable to read.

"I am kissing cousins with Chaos and nearly a foe of Fate.  I am part of random chance and unchancey irony... Do you understand... do you understand -- a little more, just a little hint more-- of what I am, now?"

He stood very still, the growing certainty cold within him.  

"Maybe...?" he said, hesitantly.

She laughed, a faint, desperate edge in her voice.  "See?" Trivia said.  "I'm rubbing off even on _you_..."

And then she was crying.

He swallowed hard, his swimming eyes blind to the words, his finger shaking so badly that he could not find his place even if he could read, as something unnamable hammered against his heart.

And then, quickly enough so that he could not think of what he was doing, his eyes left the page and he looked at her.

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say.

The electric instant of their eyes meeting was.  

"_Don't_," he said, wildly, uselessly, the book falling disregarded from his hands as he reached them to her face.  She had gone still with shock, the tears of confusion the only movement on her marble expression.  He wiped them away clumsily, desperately, for there was a terrible wrongness in her fierce and passionate grief, a wrongness that put the very universe in jeopardy.  "Don't, don't, please don't," he said and kept on saying, his words an involuntary mantra.  "_Please_ don't."

She put her hands up and gently, _gently_ lifted his away, her green eyes never ceasing to search his face.

They stared at each other for a long while, too full of detached wonder to feel embarrassed.  Her gaze was strangely solemn, and thoughtful, and slightly dubious, as though she was hunting relentlessly for some fatal danger in his eyes.

And in a wordless, mutual movement she was in his arms, still staring up at him seriously, her hands clinging tight to the huge rough folds of his robe.  He looked down at her in grave wonder, his eyes devouring her eyes, the way her hair hung round her face, her sharp chin, her delicate and strong cheekbones...

Then, quietly, gently, almost sadly, she rose and he descended into the kiss.  He wondered in some still, detached part of him if he was drowning, if she was drowning, if the movement of the lips and tongues was a blind and desperate struggle to their respective surfaces, and Destiny felt her hot, silent tears on his face.

He had somehow lurched from the safe structure of prose to the organic and orgasmic sea depths of poetry, and he was drowning.

*

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

*

Hear it.

Hear the low, throbbing drone of the wheel and the wool and the thread, a humming vibration that rises from the earth to enter your feet and your bones and shake the fabric of your being.

Hear the whisper of hands carding wool, nimbly, perfectly, eternally, rolling it between young fingers, picking out flecks of peat and earth...

Hear the rhythmic creak of the wheel as it traces the waning of the moon, the cycle of the womb, as the grey thread hisses over old wood, carving calluses on the practiced fingers that spin it, shape it, feed it into the wheel of shift and repetition and recreation...

Hear the metallic _snickersnack _of the scissors clutched in a wizened, knobby claw, the rasp of sharp and merciless edges, and the grim, gay, gleeful cackle of finale, of ending, of cut and fraying yarn...

The Grey Ladies.

White teeth glint like knifes caught in mirthless smiles as rough, course grey hair blends with spun thread that follows the writhing movement of the one (three).  

Voices:

The observer.  Destiny.

(The clicking of a tongue.)  What about him?

He _isn't_.

Isn't _what_?

Observing

He's left the book.

But he _can't_.

A third voice:

It matters not if he can or cannot.  He _has_.  He is alive.  All living things have their stories.

No, he isn't.  He doesn't _live_.  He _reads_.

It was never said that he lives.  But he _is_ alive.

_Why_?

He _loves_.

(A silence.)

She calls herself Trivia, as the moment.

(A snort.)  Clever.

Ironic.  

_Her_.

Trivia.  Ah.  The crossroads...

Has more to do with him than her, I'd think.

Not at the moment, no.

(A pause.)__

So.  

What are we to do?

_Something_.  The universe will unravel if it is unobserved.

What _can_ we do?

The third:

You don't understand.  He is in _love_.  That means he is far stronger than we have even known before...

...and that he is more vulnerable than he could ever imagine.

Smiles open like wounds, and the wordless humming throb of her dark work rises again, spinning, measuring, cutting their flawless, thick thread with a sound like the whisper of mortal blood in one's veins.  

*

Yippee!  Finally figured out how to make text do what I want! (italics, etc.).  Of course, all I had to do was actually read the directions on the site, but why should my being stupid spoil my feeling triumphant?  Anyways, this is a revised copy of the first chapter with a few things added for clarity's sake.  I'll continue this revision with the other chapters, but I don't think I'll post any more of this fic until it's completely written and nitpicked.  Please, review and tell me if this has helped any.  I'm gonna go edit then next two chapters now... brace yourself...    


	2. The Final Skepticism

Disclaimer:  By now you know what belongs to whom.  I decided on combining what was once two chapters into one.  In a perfect world this would be done in three parts, because three's rock and are generally archetypal and all that fun stuff, but, well, we shall see what happens.  The title for this chapter comes from G.K. Chesterton's definition of impressionism: "another name for that final skepticism which can find no floor to the universe."  Go read The Man Who Was Thursday .  It'll do you good.

"Are you afraid?" she asked him.

"I don't know."

She stared at him thoughtfully, then looked down at her clasped hands.  He turned his face from the sky to look at her.  They lay in the warm hollow of a green hill, the vibrant green of the grass and clover accentuating the brightness of her eyes.  

"Are you?" he asked, quietly.

"...I don't _think_ so."

He smiled faintly, almost ruefully.  "You're so strange," he said, his voice very gentle, very distant, like a child's on the edge of dreaming.  "You're so beautiful and so strange and sad and alive..."

They had given up their names by unspoken, unconscious agreement; they were an _I _and a _you_, nameless and unutterably singular, defined only by all the tiny, inarticulate features that make us truly unique: the freckle by her mouth, the color of his eyes, the way her collarbone moved as she breathed, the way his long, thin fingers would flicker over her face, as though he was trying to mark his place, as though he still could not believe his eyes.

"You are so terribly, vibrantly, violently, sadly alive," he said, tracing the line of her jaw.  "Why?"

She smiled absently, closing her eyes, and said nothing for a time.  He waited in patient quiet.

"All things are transient," she said, finally, distantly, so that he almost wondered if she was even talking to him or to the soft and quiet earth.  "Even you.  Even us.

"But what we entail – your set path, my... my aspect – those are immortal, as much as anything can be immortal."  She glanced at him gravely.  "And I don't like that.  I don't like the idea of ideas, of concepts being more lasting, more integral to the working of the universe than people.  Than you.  Than us.  No theory is worthy of the sacrifice of life, of the little things that live and dream and die."

Her brow was furrowed slightly in something like puzzlement or frustration.  He touched her lightly, soothingly, as if trying to smooth the lines away.  

"I know this," he said gently.  "I _know_.  Why are you telling me?  Why are you worrying?"

She reached out and grabbed his arm suddenly, staring at him with that strange desperate intensity of hers.  "Does the universe know?" she demanded, clutching his hand.  "Does that dark Book of yours have any regard for you?  Will whatever Fate it details be merciful to you? to us?  Does _it_ understand?"

He had no answer for her.

She relaxed then and smiled weakly at his stricken face.  "I'm sorry," she said.  "I'm sorry.  I just ... worry, sometimes."

"It's all right," he said, but she had shaken him deeply, so he wasn't sure.  The words tasted like lies.  

She smiled again and stroked his forehead gently, then kissed him.  "I need to go," she apologized.  He didn't protest, just tried to smile back at her.  She kissed him again with fierce passion that seemed to burn his worry away, then drew back reluctantly and left.

He lay there for a while in the curve of the hill, thinking, feeling the disquiet shift in him uneasily.  Then he rolled to a sitting position and drew the Book to him.  He had retrieved it soon after dropping it out of a strange mix of wariness and hope.  It had promised security, of sorts.  

The texture of the pages was indescribably _changed_ now, as though his fingers had become used to the feel of the world and of Trivia and had been irrevocably altered.  He touched them hesitantly at first, though not from his former respect.  They had been changed by her words, just as he had.  Now the Book seemed to hold something darker, impersonal, pitiless and ominous.  Fate held no scruples, he knew.  There was no justice, or kindness, or mercy, and he was no longer certain that he could trust something untouchable by the weaknesses of life or love.

But soon he was flipping through the pages impatiently, eyes flickering over the Words that unraveled the making of the universe and the creation of the age.  He felt little more than irritation.  

            '_"Hello...?"_

He paused.  In the Beginning was the Word, he remembered.

Here was another, no less earth-shaking or world-making.

He read through their conversation again, savoring each point and response, imagining her face as she spoke the words.  He continued, barely noticing the spontaneous generation of two of his siblings, then slowed and stopped.

He put out a finger to touch the page, hesitantly, as though the Words might burn him.  

_"Don't."_  

Was that a name, like Dream, or Death?

Or Destiny?

"Don't," he said aloud, feeling the word in his mouth.  It was a frail and lonely sound, a tiny hopeless bridge of desperation.

Desperation...

He shivered briefly, although he could not have said why.  Maybe because it was too close to how she would mistake his name...

Was that it?  Was it a mistake?

Or was she renaming him?

He didn't know what to make of that thought.  He stared at the Book again, uncertain.  Then he blinked down at the Words in confusion.

Their kiss had vanished from record.  If it had ever been there.  He reread the page, using the place his finger marked as a reference point, only to find that it no longer touched _don't_.

It was in the middle of a description of the Grey Ladies.  There had been no second conversation.  There had been no kiss, no rejection of the Book, no _don't_.   

A tiny flame of panic began to burn in his mind, a tiny sliver of terror that lodged within his heart as he stared at the description of the Three, and he could almost feel the Words themselves staring back at him. 

After a frozen instant of time he turned a page hastily, scanned it, flipped back and back again, under the frail and desperate hope that somehow he had skipped something.  He even went back to the first time he met her, to the first _hello_, the single word that shifted to course of his life, to no avail.  

It was no use.

Yes, he had thrown the Book away.  True.  But he had still been operating in the knowledge that a script existed, a detailed, specific plan of how the universe unfolded, of how things turned out.  He had known that no matter how chaotic or treacherous the universe appeared, there was one truth that was beyond doubt or error.

No longer.  Now certainty, dry and dull and comfortable certainty had shifted to fear and the feeling that he was falling.  Where _was _she?  Where in this Book, this dark Book that disregarded any human mercy, could the presence of her be hidden?

(There was another thought in the storm of his mind, one he could not bear to admit to himself.  It was one of relief.  He could not know her name now.  The temptation to look it up would not trouble him.)

The last certainty had betrayed him.  Now he was stranded in a world that he could not trust and incased in painful, impervious solitude.  

"Help," he whispered, his voice creaking from him.  He felt horribly alone.  "Help."

*

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

*

Three voices: Pity could almost be felt for him. 

But it isn't.

Of course not.  

Which realm is he creeping into?  Delusion?  Or disillusion? 

Self-deluding.  Self-eluding. 

Take no chances with him.  His path is tangled.

The Book is absolute.

But he is not.  He may deviate.

He already has.

We will remedy that.

What do we do now?  The Book may be absolute, but it unravels as we speak.

The third:

We grant him disillusion.

*

What could he do now? 

He was walking, stumbling, shaking, his breath labored, tired beyond reckoning: a soul-tired, mind-tired, spirit-tired weariness that made his mind a roaring canvas of white noise, made his tread confused, irregular, every step doubtful of the very earth existing to support his weight.

He had thrown the Book away from him with all the strength he could muster, a violent burst of energy that left him as suddenly as it had come.  Now he was simply putting as much distance between himself and those terrible, unflinching words as possible.  Holding it now would be like holding his own corpse.

He could not bear to think of a world bereft of her.

He could not bear to exist in a world where the Book could be wrong.

What was his name now?  What _was_ he?

"Dilemma," she said, her voice in his ear.

"Yes," he said absently, then corrected, "Destiny."  He paused and looked around wildly.  "Where are you?" 

Her voice continued as though she had not heard him, and he wondered now if it was even her voice.  Female, certainly, but flat, distant, dispassionate.   

"Drama," she/it said.  "Direction.  Double.  Defect."

It was a list, apparently.  "Where are you?" he repeated, his voice cracking.  The litany continued without pause, one Word marching after the other.

"Dimension.  Denial.  Detour.  Digression."

"What do you _mean_?  What are you _saying_?"  The wind blew against him, curt and cold.  The world had gone gray, somehow.

"Duration.  Desolation.  Displacement.  Decline."  The voice was sharp and precise, stabbing with cool rationality that terrified him.

"_STOP!_"

"Descent.  Deception.  Devotion.  Dementia."

He dropped to his knees, whatever frail stubbornness or power that had held him for this long giving out.  He huddled on the ground, hunched against the cold air and the impersonal inventory of words, too weak to protest.  

"Desolation.  Defense.  Disorder.  Dismay.  

"Departure.  Domain.  Dominance.  Distraction.

"Disguise.  Disgrace.  Duality.  Decay.

"Detestation.  Disuse.  Dogma.  Divinity.

"Discord.  Distance.  Dysphoria.  Diablerie.  

"Dharma.  Denouement.  Disadvantage.  Disaster."

The words continued on, and on, until he could no longer register them.  

"Destiny."  

"Don't.  Please.  Don't start again," he managed, the words brittle and broken.

And _she_ was there, truly there, crouched beside him, finding his cold hand and clutching it tightly.

"Shh," she said.  "Shh."    

He stared up at her blindly.  Then his eyes focused.

"You...?"

"I know," she said, embracing him, letting her hands stroke his back.  "I know."

"What...what happened?  What were you saying?  What does all this mean?"

She was very still for a time, her eyes thoughtful.

"We are separating from our roles," she said at last.  

The lines of bewilderment and fear deepened in his forehead.

"When my voice was being used, it was... naming you.  Naming all that you were, and are, and will be.  In you are all those... attributes.  Characteristics.  Archetypes."

"The Book," he said faintly.  "The Book... it's... failing.  It's untrue.  It's... I don't know.  I don't know anything anymore."

"See?" she persisted gently.  "Destiny is part of the Book.  That role of Destiny that you are used to playing.  And now there is _you_.  There is a _you _that is separate from that role."  She could see he still didn't understand.

"Listen.  Some time from now, your brother.  Dream.  He will take on another name.  It is used interchangeably with his function at times, but the name he took does not go on after he dies."

"He _dies_?!"

She smiled at him sadly.  "All things die.  Even the Endless.  The functions continue, but the real people that are trapped within them die.  But that's not the point.  He finds a way to separate _himself_, his individuality, his own uniqueness, from his role as one of the Endless.  He becomes truly of himself."

"But he _dies_."

"All that is individual, all that is real, is transient.  To be oneself is to be alive.  And all that lives dies."

He was shaking now in fatigue and confusion.  She held him tightly, rocking him, calming him like a small child.  

"Rest," she said.  "Rest."

He stared at her warily.

Doubt, he thought, and shivered at the irony.  Who was he naming?  Him?  Her?

Or was it just a Word?

He slept without Dreaming.

*

Three voices:

Soon.

Yes.

His fear is building.

As is his love.

What about her?

Who can say?  Who can say what of what she says is her function and what is her dysfunction?

No matter.  

Yes.

Soon.

*

Ending note:  Well, not much to say.  Sorry if this is confusing.  Tell me your thoughts, rants, suggestions, and how badly I'm ruining all things Gaiman for you.  Put succinctly: review.  And if you have a bone to pick or shove down my throat so I choke on it, um, well, I'd prefer you to be constructive rather than destructive, but it is of course entirely your call.  A friend of mine actually wrote a short story about that.  Someone shoving a bone down a throat, anyways.  Not down _mine_.  Um.  Anyway... 


	3. Bound

Disclaimer:  The Sandman and associated characters belong to Neil Gaiman/Vertigo/DC Comics.  "somewhere i have never traveled" was written by e.e.cummings.  This is the last chapter of this fanfiction and probably the most difficult to write – a great deal of inspiration came from _Everything Is Illuminated_, by Jonathon Safran Foer, which is a damn good (if utterly heartbreaking) book and worthy of considerable praise.  

We are not immune to what we entail, he thought.

We are subject to our functions.

Whatever lives, dies; whatever dies becomes immortal.  Is that true?  Does it even make sense?

I am Destiny.  I _was_ Destiny.  I am subject to my role.

I _have_ a destiny.  What could it be?

Do I really want to know?

Denial... disinterest... distraction...

Words shifted in his mind, mere husks of sounds and feelings bereft of meaning.  He could not take it in.  He could not understand.

Did he have to?

I can die.  My brother died.  Or will die.  If I know that he dies later now... how does that change things?  I am dead already, just as Trivia is dead, and the universe is dead...

A shiver of Determination and surrender flickered through him.

I am myself.  And I am alive.

He opened his eyes.

She was lying next to him, her eyelashes dark against her pale face, her eyes closed.  He kissed her forehead gently and sat up, stretching.

I made a Decision, he thought, faintly pleased.  I made my choice.

"Hello," she said, rolling up to sit beside him.  Bright flecks of grass were caught in her dark hair, echoing the color of her eyes.  She shook her head slightly, dislodging a few, and smiled at him sleepily.  

She was very beautiful, almost painfully so, and he wondered why he hadn't gone blind for looking at her radiance.  

"Hello," he said quietly, smiling faintly at her.  She tipped her head to one side, looking at him, her hair following her movement.

"Did you know," he said, "that you are the only person in this entire world who has seen my eyes?"  She shook her head again in mock gravity, like a fascinated child.

"It's true.  Even my sister, who has seen all things and will see all things, even she will never be able to tell their color."  He felt like talking, unexpectedly, of simply babbling on about things inconsequential and fleeting and beautiful.  

"You've changed," she said, matter-of-fact.

"Yes," he said.  "I have."

And she smiled.

*

Three voices:

It will not last.

No.

No.  

But...

But?

_He_ knows it, too.  And he continues, disregarding this fact.

True.  

_Why_?

(A pause.)

He _lives_, now.

A complication.

The third:

But it is one that makes no difference.

*

It would not last.  He knew that.  She probably knew it as well.

But there was no point in acknowledging it.  

"Why are we doing this?" he asked her once, when they were making love, or walking, or staring at the stars, or performing any other of the tiny insignificant actions that lovers do.

"There are always two answers to 'why,'" she told him, eyes bright.  "There is 'why not?'"

"And?" he pressed, his eyes on hers, his lips on hers, his hands on hers.

She smiled.  "And there is 'because.'  Choose whichever you like best."

He kissed her, deeply, repeatedly, laughing.

There would be those times of mindless Delight, of the sheer and simple joy of being alive and together and in love, and there would be little instances of brief and stabbing eternity when the consequences of what they had done hung heavy over them.

"It won't last," she said in one of these times, her head on his chest, solemn and quiet.

"No," he agreed, very softly, their hushed words and breath and the rising and falling of their chests mingling in the dusk.  

All that lives, dies, he thought.  And all that dies becomes immortal.

He wondered if Death knew that.  

*

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skillfully,musteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

*

Time had never been an issue for him before.  Duration, perhaps, but never with the slight edge of desperation that time brings as seconds vanish into the dark to be forever lost.  

Previously aeons had flickered by; now each moment was something impressed with both love and grief almost beyond bearing, to be savored and let go only reluctantly.  

"Why is it," he asked her once, rhetorically, "that love and grief are twins?"

She put her chin on her hands, staring up at him.  "Because," she said at last.

He smiled faintly, ruefully, and stroked her dark hair.

There existed within him some strange, detached part of himself that could not believe this was happening to him; that he had fallen in love, that he had thrown the Book away, that he was improvising his own spontaneous, serendipitous life.  This Doubt followed him, even when he was speaking to her, or making love, or listening to her speak to him, or telling her he loved her.

"Distraction," she murmured thoughtfully, watching him, running a finger along his face as she traced his profile.

"No names," he said gently, and covered her mouth with his.  "No names."

And somehow that tiny insatiable splinter of curiosity still burned in him, wondering relentlessly what hers was.

*

"Tell me about the beginning," she said.

"What do you mean?"

She smiled, one of her grand slow marvelous smiles that caused him to wonder if he'd go blind by looking at her for too long, like looking at the sun.

Love is blind, someone had said, or would say.

_Destiny is blind..._

He shivered faintly and pushed the shadow-whisper from the future away.

"I mean in the _very_ beginning," she explained, earnestly.  "In the beginning was the word, and all that."

"In the beginning was the Word," he repeated slowly.  "Yes.  That's right."

"So?  What was it?  What did it say?"

"I don't know.  I don't think I ever knew."

"_What?_"

He turned to look at her.  "The Word wasn't important for what it said.  It just _was_.  I don't know was it said, or in what context, or who wrote it.  I may have my suspicions, but I don't know."

"But the Book..."

"The Book tends to be rather secretive about itself," he said flatly.  "Unfortunately."

There was a pause.

"What happened next?" she asked, hesitantly.

He shrugged against the grass.  "A lot of things.  A lot of things that really aren't translatable.  There was the Silver City and _that_ entire ill-fated fiasco with Lucifer, and later Hell, and later still, Earth.  And there I was, and Death, and Dream, and Destruction."  He frowned slightly, puzzled, then looked at her.  

"Where were _you_?" he asked, curiously.  "When did you turn up?"

She didn't meet his gaze.  Her lips twitched, then formed soundless shapes until she said, finally, "About the same time as you.  I think.  I don't... I can't keep track of time very well.  And..."

"And?" he asked with strange urgency.

"And we're compliments.  Sort of.  Opposites.  After all."  Her face was pale and unreadable.  Then she looked at him, her green eyes dark.  "I don't think I should talk about it."

"Please," he said.  "I need to know.  What... what are you like?  What part did you play, before this?"  He was sitting up now, staring at her intently.

"I'm erratic," she said, agitation flickering across her face.  "In the eyes of Fate... I'm an aberration, part of story, but not of sequence.  A random occurrence."  She shook her head.  "Please.  Don't ask me anymore."

"What do you mean?" he demanded, his voice loud.  "What are you saying?"  

She cringed, shrinking away from him.  "It's not important," she said desperately.  "Truly.  Please..."

He grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her skin.  "Tell me!"

"_DON'T_."

He snatched his hand away as though it had been burned, staring at her face in shock.  The fury slipped from her expression, then, and she was crying in huge stabbing sobs.  "Please, please, _please_ don't," she choked out.  "Don't.  Don't.  Please."  She hid her face in her hands, her thin body shaking. 

His mouth was open, his hands trembling.  "Please," he said, weakly.  "I'm sorry.  I'm sorry."  He reached for her and she flinched.  "I'm sorry," he repeated, helpless and horrified.  "I'm so sorry."

*

Three voices:

Now.

Now.

Now.

*

It was a long time before she pushed her dark hair from her face and took a deep, shuddering sigh, and longer still before he could bear to look at her.

She forced a weak smile.  "Well," she managed.

He stared at her worriedly.  'This won't last," he said rapidly.  "I... I can't stay like this much longer.  I know your name, now.  I realized that.  And it's only a matter if time before I say it."

–No longer.

He recognized the voice now, the cold, impersonal statement of fact – not even a voice, really, just a word meant to be seen, not heard.  

"Who _is_ that?" he asked the girl who had called herself Trivia.

"They're coming," she whispered.  She was very pale now, white as salt, her eyes huge with dread.  Her mouth barely moved, as though only a little of her attention could be spared for words.  She got to her feet rapidly and awkwardly.

"What?  _Who?_" he demanded, panic rising within him.  He could taste fear in his mouth, bitter and dry.  

"The Kindly Ones," she said faintly.  "The Fates.  The Moria.  The Norns.  The Three.  You know who they are."  She staggered over to him blindly, her gaze blank and distracted, and her hands clawed desperately at his sleeve.  "They're coming," she repeated, her desperate grip tightening with each word.  "They're coming they're coming oh God they're _coming_..."

The air _cringed_ and there was a stench of ash and lightning.

Destiny felt the blood thudding in his hands, a driving tattoo of fear that was loud in the electric silence.

Then he realized, the knowledge congealing into a frozen knot in his gut, that he wasn't hearing a heartbeat at all, only the ponderous, whispering throb and hum of a spinning wheel.  He turned around slowly, reluctantly, his hand falling from Trivia's grasp.

And he saw them.

They had brought gloom with them – the sky was flat and leaden now, the entire landscape cold and still.  He didn't know how long they had been standing there, watching the two of them, though he suspected it had been for a long while.

How could he not have known?  How could he not have _seen_ them?

_Destiny is blind..._

The Fates stood there like mannequins, the only movement being the steady revolution of the wheel and the occasional flutter of hair or cloth in the uneasy wind.  One was seated at the wheel, methodically sustaining its movement, while the other two flanked her.

–Lord, said one, her pale and perfect lips parting to form the word precisely.  She was the youngest (as far as appearances could be trusted), every sweet curve of her body edged with youth and a strange, scornful, untouchable perfection.  Her eyes were the bitter grey of the cold sea, and her ivory hair floated around the expressionless oval of her face.

–Eldest, said another, the seated one.  She was middle-aged and comfortably plump, her lips pressed in a thin, practical line.  Her eyes were hazel and steady, her browned hands moving with practiced ease as she fed the wool into the wheel.  Her gaze, cool and politely inquisitive, never left his face.

–Destiny, said the last, and, uniquely, there was something in her voice, be it harsh satisfaction or some strange and twisted tenderness he could not tell.  

The crone.

She was very tall, almost as tall as he was, a sharp face with eyes darker than the void between stars staring at him inscrutably, at once distant and mocking.  

Clenched in her bony fist was a pair of scissors.

There was a long pause.

"What business do you have with me?" he asked at last, guardedly, his gaze shifting rapidly from one figure to another.

–Small things, the maiden said, each word flawless and stabbing as diamonds and ice. 

–Fate.

–Your future, the matron continued, more gently, picking up the thread of the conversation without pause.  

–Balance, spoke the crone, voice low.

–_Her_, they said together with dark emphasis.

He glanced over at Trivia, startled.  She was biting her lip and staring at the Fates, her face pale.

"What business has _she _with you?" he demanded.

The young woman answered him, cold and gleeful and merciless.  –In a way she is part of us, both as a female and as her role, like it or not.  And your current affair is causing the world grief.

"What aspect do you come as?" Destiny asked quietly.  "The Eumenides?"  

The crone stared at him somberly.  –We are Fate's handmaiden's.  We come not with punishment.  Only consequence.

–This... diversion, eldest, the mother said, –is disrupting the balance defined by the Book.

"So why are you here?" he snapped bitterly.  "As a slap on the wrist?  A threat?"

–You heard the first time, the maiden insisted coldly.  –No threats.  No punishments.  Only promises, and consequences.

–There are roles, the mother intoned.  –There are roles that must be preserved as counterweights for the rest of the universe.  You are Destiny.

The crone said nothing now, only held out her hands, and he saw the heavy shape of the Book.

"No," he said weakly, desperately.  "No."

She simply shook her head and held it out to him.  His face twisted.

"NO!" he screamed.

There was a dispassionate silence.

"Denial."

He whipped around to stare at Trivia in shock.  "_What_?"

"Doom," she continued, her voice thin and very quiet.  She didn't meet his gaze.  "Dilemma.  Drama.  Decision.  Discard.  Deviant."

She stepped closer to him with every word, and finally raised her head to look directly in his eyes.  Her face was like marble, silent tears running from her eyes that were almost unnoticeable in the solemnity of her gaze. 

"No," he said involuntarily, for he knew what would come next, but there was no force behind his words.

"Destiny."

He was frozen, gaping at her face, and he felt the entire earth falling away from him.  He could not take his eyes from her, from the quivering tautness of her body, from her set jaw and those eyes that made the entire world irrelevant.

"I name you," she said steadily.  "I name you as you are.  You are Destiny."

He had lost.

The Fates had waited quietly, without movement, but he was now aware of their gaze.

"All right," he said, the word creaking from him.  "All right."  He turned to them, slowly.  "But I have a question."

The maiden turned her back to him, pointedly.  The matron stared down at the wheel turning beneath her hands.

–Ask, the crone said.

"Why... why me?  Why do I have to do this?"  He sighed, deeply and wearily.  "Why can't I have my own life?  Why do I have to know exactly what will happen to me?

"Why?"

There was a silence.

–You define freedom and ignorance by your lack of both.  You are the counterbalance.  And to every why there is a _because_ or a _why not_.

"That's no answer," he murmured.

–There are no answers.  

"I know."

He watched the mother draw the thread she had been spinning from the wheel, and he saw it was a chain.

He watched the chain attached to the Book with surgical exactitude, the three Fates working with the detached efficiency of nurses or midwives, and he knew that the other end would be chained to him, to never be cast off again.

The maiden looked at him then, and he could not read her eyes.  –You know what you must do, she said.

"...Yes."

And Trivia was in his arms and she was clinging to him so tightly he thought he ribs would crack and he felt the silent heat of their tears and he breathed in the smell of her and thought his heart would break.

She pulled away after awhile, staring up at him unreadably, her green eyes steady and quiet.

"I have to name you now," he said softly, every word stabbing.  "I'm sorry."

"I know."

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him fiercely, holding his head in her hands, in something like defiance and in something like pain.

He savored it for one moment and pulled back, holding her gaze with his.  He did not look away. 

"Luck."

She stared at him for one clear moment, silent and calm, and then she was gone.  

*

He barely felt the chain being set around his wrist, or the familiar weight of the Book placed in his arms (where she had been, only a moment ago), or the silent, tactful retreat of the Fates into whatever world they came from, their work completed.  He felt only the pain of a hook in his heart.

He held the Book in his hands and allowed it to fall open, not looking at it, not looking at any place but where her eyes had been.  

_Destiny is blind_.

Yes.  He was.  His eyes were hers, forever hers.

He turned his head down, almost mechanically, and blinked at the words.

*

In the end there is little to tell.

Destiny retreated into his realm and into his role, forsaking all the earth for his garden of certainty. 

Not that he had a choice.

He walks now, wandering the paths, never looking up from the words, never forgetting what they chose not to say.  

He is chained to his position as much as he is chained to a world that is perfectly predictable, without hope or choice.

Or Luck.

In the end, when the universe dissolves and Death comes to turn off the lights for the final time, his chain will be released and his burden set down gratefully.

He knows that every step he takes will bring him infinitesimally closer to this moment. 

Destiny does not hope.

Destiny waits.

*

Well.  Um.  Please review.  I'm not sure if it makes sense at the end, or if it gets sappy or anything, so any and all comments are welcome.  Just don't be too cruel.


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